In a sudden move, Donald Trump has agreed to funding the government until February 15 without getting his money for the wall. So the can gets kicked down the road until February 15 and we get to go through this whole rigmarole again.

BREAKING NEWS: The House and Senate will vote on legislation to reopen the government until Feb. 15. During that period, lawmakers will discuss funds for border security and President Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion for the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

The outcome was a win for Democrats and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who had insisted on no negotiations until the government was reopened.

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I have been fascinated by the dynamic between Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump. Unlike with his other adversaries where Trump goes aggressively on the attack, calling them insulting names and ridiculing them at every opportunity, he has been remarkably restrained with Pelosi. It cannot be just a gender thing because Trump has been savage with Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, giving them both derisive nicknames. So what is the deal with Pelosi that finds him consistently wrong-footed and awkward?
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At this moment, some of world’s wealthiest people are gathering at a resort in Davos, Switzerland where they decide how best to rule the world because it is an established fact that having a lot of money makes you incredibly smart about pretty much everything. I am a bit surprised why they do not also solve the problems of dark matter, the origins of life, and human consciousness while they are at it. A few panel discussions among corporate CEOs should be sufficient. Many political leaders from around the world also attend this obscene spectacle because they like to pretend that they have some role in running the world and are not just puppets of the oligarchy.
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When Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote to Donald Trump rescinding her earlier invitation to him to address a joint session of Congress to deliver the State of the Union on January 29, saying that it should be rescheduled once the government is re-opened, she knew that she was hitting him where it hurts, denying him the opportunity to be the center of attention at a big extravaganza that would be covered by all the TV networks and where he would have the ability to lambaste Democrats for not funding his stupid wall and castigate them for all manner of things right to their faces without interruption, accompanied by applause from the fawning Republicans.
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Writing in the February 2019 issue of Harper’s Magazine (possible paywall), Charles Glass reviews how the US got involved in Syria and, with a confusing and contradictory policy, ended up creating the current mess. It is a classic example of how the US starts out by using covert methods to destabilize governments it does not like, proceeds to support dissidents in exile and arm groups in the hope that they will succeed in deposing the government (in Syria it was a group known as the Free Syrian Army of FSA), and when that fails, starts sending it mercenaries and providing air support. Then when that too fails, a military invasion becomes seen as inevitable.
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Somewhat lost in the fuss over Donald Trump petulantly canceling Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Iraq is what these trips reveal about the failure of US policy there. The trip for her and other Congressional members had been planned in great secrecy, just like Trump’s visit the previous month. This continues the practice of top US political leaders sneaking in and out of that country like thieves in the night, revealing their trip only after they are back home.
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If there is one thing that we have learned, it is that Donald Trump is a lousy dealmaker. Yesterday he announced with great fanfare his offer to open the government. Underwhelming would be too kind a description for what he came up with and it was rejected by the speaker Nancy Polosi in fairly contemptuous terms, designed to show him that what may have worked with other politicians will not work with her, a message that she set in motion when she met with him in the White House on December 11 and warned him publicly not to trigger the ‘Trump shutdown’.

“She’s not only outmanoeuvring him, she’s outraging him,” said Michael Cornfield, associate professor of political management at George Washington University in Washington. “She’s taunting him. She’s the matador, he’s the bull. He has no idea what he’s doing. He’s a genius of the publicity arts, not the political arts. In this he’s an absolute novice.”
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It must have come as a shock to a man who has spent the past two years being surrounded by yes men and yes women, the latter including Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Sanders. Cornfield said: “We will look back on 11 December as the day he met his match. She has mastered two political skills he doesn’t even know he’s deficient in.

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Via Juanita Jean, I saw that someone named Jesse Lee Patterson Peterson posted the same powerful photograph of six new congresswomen that I had posted a couple of weeks earlier, but with annotations.

When I first saw his additions, I thought they were meant to highlight the fact that these women brought even more diverse backgrounds than I had initially been aware of. But apparently Peterson thinks these are derogatory things that should disqualify them from office. (I notice that he writes for the site World Nut Net Daily, a fount of right-wing insanity, which alone discredits him. Actually, I am surprised that the site is still around.)

What a sad man.